Tuesday, July 27, 2010

I am happy that the comments to my blog “A lesson from Lysenkoism?” (Klimazwiebel, 6 June 2010) give me an opportunity clarify a couple of issues.

Firstly: I believe there is an important lesson about scientific autonomy to be learned. The present threat is not direct political intervention like in 1948, but subtle ideological, political and economic factors that undermine scientific autonomy in the long run.

Secondly: Lysenko became infamous for his genetics. But it was contributions to plant physiology that launched his career. His personal career as well as that of his teachings can only be properly understood on this background. Traditional historiography misleads by neglecting the work that first gave Lysenko both national and international scientific status and recognition.

Sunday, July 25, 2010

A key factor in determining future global warming is the reaction of the clouds to rising temperatures: if cloud cover diminishes or clouds reflect less solar radiation they can exacerbate the effect of CO2: by the same token, they can moderate the warming if they become more extensive or more reflective in the future. Since climate models are nor particularly good at simulating clouds, this is the most important single source of uncertainty.

I have just discovered that The Economist offers a series of interesting short interviews on a series of different topics. Two of them are related to climate change. One is with Brian Hoskins, a very well known expert on atmospheric dynamics and review editor in the last IPCC Report. He offers what I find are candid views on uncertainties, climate models and action on climate change. This interview is post-climategate.

I recall Werner confronting me with this question some moths ago in this blog, and now one of our regular readers, Jon, has sent me a thoughtful article published in Global Change containing exactly the same question. The author of this article is clearly seeking a common ground to break the current stalemate, something that is really welcomed.

Saturday, July 24, 2010

A new paper in press in Journal of Climate by Jason Smerdon from the Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory and collaborators documents surprising, and somewhat inexplicable, errors in some previous pseudo-proxy studies by Mann and collaborators.

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

The FT has an interesting article on energy technologies. It reports on the Climate Change Committee’s warning that the UK is not on track with investment in this area and is falling behind other countries (read the Committee's full report here)

The Committee on Climate Change, the statutory body that advises ministers on emissions reduction targets, said the UK spent 0.01 per cent of GDP on energy in 2007, the latest year for which comparative figures are available. That compared to 0.03 per cent in the US, 0.05 per cent in France and 0.09 per cent in Japan.

Friday, July 16, 2010

It's summer, and temperature is rising. More than ever, according to recent data. According to the Guardian and many other sources, it was the hottest June ever:
'The trend to a warmer world is now incontrovertible. According to NOAA, June was the 304th consecutive month with a combined global land and surface temperature above the 20th-century average. The last month with below-average temperatures was February 1985. Each of the 10 warmest average global temperatures recorded since 1880 have occurred in the last 15 years with the previous warmest first half of a year in 1998. '

Thursday, July 15, 2010

This is just paraphernalia, but it's fun to think about. Unfortunately only in German: in the spiegel-online interview, a scientist argues that 'Homeopathy is a dogma' in contrast to science (orthodox medicine). The political background is the proposition to ban homeopathy from health care services. In the interview, the scientist argues that there is no scientific evidence for the effectiveness of homeopathy according to standardized tests. His main argument is that homeopathy is not 'scientific'- 'nicht wissenschaftlich'.

Sunday, July 11, 2010

The Economist runs this week two pieces on climate. I liked very much the leader article titled Flawed Scientist , although the title does not actually correspond very well with the content of the article. If someone would ask me to summarize my view on the present controversies I would point to this op-ed. The lengthier report Science behind closed doors in the magazine about the recent Dutch, Oxburgh, and Muir-Russel assessments is, I think also, quite accurate.

Wednesday, July 7, 2010

The full report can be downloaded here, it is 160 pages long. The BBC reports as main findings that the integrity of the scientists is not in question but that openness about data was a problem. Little suprise here. The BBC says:

"Sir Muir commented: "So we conclude that the argument that CRU has something to hide does not stand up".

Sunday, July 4, 2010

Roger A. Pielke Sr. claims that the Working Group I report of IPCC AR4 (2007) contains at least three significant errors - with error meaning "an inaccurate or flawed analysis of the available, scientifically legitimate knowledge available in time of the deadline of AR4". Thus the issue is not whether the statements about the climate are in hindsight wrong or right, but if the assessment provides a reliable account of the knowledge at the time of the assessment. The deadline was in mid 2006.

One error refers to an incomplete account of the drivers of climate change (absorbing aerosols and land-use changes), another relates to a figure caption, and the third to the attribution of recent warm years only to elevated greenhouse gas levels.

The Yale project on climate change communication released a working paper, a reader of this blog pointed out to us, that examines the impact of Climategate on public perceptions of climate change and climate scientists, drawing on a national survey which was conducted in December, 2009 and January, 2010.

In brief, the project found that "Climategate" had a significant negative effect on public beliefs in global warming and trust in scientists. The loss of trust in scientists, however, appears to have been primarily among people with a strongly individualistic worldview or politically conservative ideology. Nonetheless, the project found that Americans overall continued to trust scientists more than any other source of information about global warming.

Sustainable use of KLIMAZWIEBEL

The participants of KLIMAZWIEBEL are made of a diverse group of people interested in the climate issue; among them people, who consider the man-made climate change explanation as true, and others, who consider this explanation false. We have scientists and lay people; natural scientists and social scientists. People with different cultural and professional backgrounds. This is a unique resource for a relevant and inspiring discussion. This resource needs sustainable management by everybody. Therefore we ask to pay attention to these rules:

1. We do not want to see insults, ad hominem comments, lengthy tirades, ongoing repetitions, forms of disrespect to opponents. Also lengthy presentation of amateur-theories are not welcomed. When violating these rules, postings will be deleted.2. Please limit your contributions to the issues of the different threads.3. Please give your name or use an alias - comments from "anonymous" should be avoided.4. When you feel yourself provoked, please restrain from ranting; instead try to delay your response for a couple of hours, when your anger has evaporated somewhat.5. If you wan to submit a posting (begin a new thread), send it to either Eduardo Zorita or Hans von Storch - we publish it within short time. But please, only articles related to climate science and climate policy.6. Use whatever language you want. But maybe not a language which is rarely understood in Hamburg.